Lists like this are so much bullshit. How can you ever rank such a subjective thing? The way these lists TRY to do it is by asking a selective series of questions and assigning weights to each one. This particular list was created by a British group in Britain with the goal of building a new economy, "centered on people
and the environment." In addition to simple reported "satisfaction", the group considered
the ecological footprint and life expectancy of countries.
Quote:
"Costa Ricans report the highest life satisfaction in the world and have the second-highest average life expectancy of the new world (second to Canada)," the organization said in a statement.
They "also have an ecological footprint that means that the country only narrowly fails to achieve the goal of ... consuming its fair share of the Earth's natural resources."
In fact, Latin American countries snared 9 out of the 10 top spots on this list and most developed nations lagged far behind. The USA came out at only 114th, because of its hefty consumption and massive ecological footprint. I won't dispute the ethics, efficiency or sustainability of the US's high consumption model, but in terms of happiness I WOULD dispute what seems to be this study's central premise, that the more a nation consumes relative to its natural resources the less "happy" that nation is. For example, my A/C broke down yesterday and I can tell you I was a LOT happier last week burning electricity than I am today and I'm a LOT happier dining on steak rather than a monotonous diet of beans and rice even though my life expectancy may be shorter because of it and I give very little thought that it took so many more acres, fertilizers, water and other natural resources to grow the grain to feed the cattle to enable me to eat that meat then would have been needed to grow the beans and rice. (Actually, I DO give that a little thought and have shifted to a much more heavily vegetarian diet than I used to have primarily for environmental and health reasons but most other Americans are much happier with their high protein diets and I'd bet most Ticos would be too if they had the choice)
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